Saturday, March 21, 2009

Obama on the Tonight Show w/ Jay Leno



So here's an interesting bit...

According to CNN, "Obama became the first sitting president to appear before a late-night talk show studio audience." After having watched it, I thought it was rather entertaining. I noticed his joke about his bowling skills near the end and I just thought, "ouch. slip-up"...

And I was somewhat right. His joke about his poor bowling skills was a minor slipup that resulted in a ton of not-so-good temporary media coverage (it was headline news online for a while).

"I bowled a 129," -Obama.
"That's very good, Mr. President," -Leno.
"It's like the Special Olympics or something," -Obama.

This, obviously, immediately spawned a horde of related substories and Obama (obviously) immediately appologized for his mistake.

Links:

Obama Apologizes for calling his bad bowling skills like the Special Olympics

Special Olympics Bowler: I can beat the President!

So, any thoughts/comments about his mistake or even just the video itself?

-Personally, I think it's fine. People these days are just too sensitive to these things. What he says may not have been said with any malice or intent to offend (obviously) but it's still clear that he shouldn't have said it. Like casually saying ****** or ***, (*words which I will not type out, but use your imaginations), or anything else that has slowly integrated itself into mainstream vernacular language, there may not be any bad intent behind it, but someone may still have been offended. He shouldn't have said it, clearly, but I feel as if people also shouldn't have overreacted in this manner to his blunder. As for the interview/show itself, I thought that Obama performed very well. He kept it interesting with a bit of humor here and there and as always he was an amazing speaker.

1 comment:

Osama said...

It was very entertaining.
Obama is a funny guy, but the bowling saying was not funny. Its was a slip up and he knew it. But if it were anyone else who said that no problem. But because it was the president he must be perfect? He has so much to deal with, I'm surprised he was able to get time out of the crisis and show up on the show. That there was a mistake, I personally think. It was a great show, but right now I dont think it was a good time for him to be on the show period. But hes only human, we all say things that seem funny in our heads but to others its a whole different story. Maybe we all just need to think more.